Reflection on Learning

Community Health & the Global Burden of Disease

On a daily basis, the residents of Miami-Dade County encounter a variety of health issues. Many of these problems go unsolved because the rate of growth they create outweighs the resources available to deal with them. Heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19, for example, are the top three health concerns affecting Miami residents.

National initiatives

The National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) is a community resource offered to Miami Dade County that provides mental health education and assistance, including peer and family support groups (Brooks, 2019). In the midst of this public health crisis, a similar organization, United Homecare, helps clients with DAILY living tasks by providing healthcare and home visits, but they are also focusing on enhancing mental wellness and reducing mental illness risks for clients. Mental health prevention and high-quality mental health treatment are at the core of Healthy People 2020's mission. An additional national health program is the "National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion." The objective of preventative care is to assist individuals in avoiding getting sick while encouraging them to adopt healthy habits (Healthy People 2020, n.d.). The only approach to significantly enhance the community's health, in the long run, is to teach individuals how to avoid certain lifestyle choices to reduce their risks and how to use specialized tools, such as early screening.

Advocacy Strategies

The following are some of the methods I would use to engage a local policymaker in a national campaign to push for change:

Social policies are evaluated for their potential impact on the health of new, proposed, and existing policymakers using Health Impact Assessments (HIA). By assessing the risks and benefits of proposed policies and programs and providing recommendations for how to maximize positive impacts while minimizing adverse consequences, the HIA enhances the quality of policy decisions. According to Pennel et al. (2017), participation of public stakeholder groups is a key element of HIA, as it allows for health and well-being social models that are evidently centered on social justice, equity, and openness. In this case, the four underlying values are Ethical, evidence-based decision-making, sustainable development, equity (considering the effects on the entire population), and democracy (promoting stakeholder engagement) (Brooks, 2019).

Use the "health in all policies" strategy to incorporate health improvement and screening of all individuals as objectives that are shared across all areas of government. HiAP addresses public policies across sectors in an attempt in order to improve health equity and population health. This way, it uses health promotion synergies and systematically assessing implications of decisions to reduce health disparities associated with social determinants (Pennel et al., 2017). Because social determinants of health (SDH) are the most important elements impacting population health and health equality, health policy must move its attention away from illness-focused health care and toward policies that affect people's everyday social environments (Brooks, 2019). Our largest health challenges—for example, skyrocketing healthcare costs, climate change, health disparities and inequalities, and non-communicable diseases are incredibly complex and often linked by a wide range of social factors (Pennel et al., 2017).

Tweet

“The Global Burden of Disease affects a community's wellbeing by reducing life expectancy, increased morbidity, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years.”

Dr. Riley with Congressman Aiken.

When preparing my initial meeting with a congressman visit, I need to plan ahead of time because representatives have conflicting priorities, and getting on their calendars and influencing the policy decision-making process takes planning and a little finesse on the advocates'. Therefore, I'll look into the legislator's position and voting record on this topic. To learn more about legislators' goals, look at their website, social media, and other public statements.

References

Brooks, A. (2019, March 4). What is community health, and why is it important? Rasmussen University. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/health-sciences/blog/what-is-community-health/.

Healthy People 2020. (n.d.). Topics & Objectives. 2020 Topics and Objectives – Objectives A–Z | Retrieved October 11, 2021, from

https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives.

Pennel, C. L., McLeroy, K. R., Burdine, J. N., Matarrita-Cascante, D., & Wang, J. (2016). Community health needs assessment: potential for population health improvement. Population Health Management, 19(3), 178-186.